What on earth does Number Scrubbing have to do with Mobile Compliance? Well, if you think about it carefully, it actually makes complete sense. This is why. Mobile Compliance, in a peanut shell, refers to the requirements that a provider has to adhere to in accordance with the law – especially those regulations that have to do with consumer rights. For instance, mobile providers are not allowed to target children or send messages to a consumer’s phone after the consumer chose the “opt out” option. The point of these regulations are to protect consumers. If you are concerned that such compliance rules will keep you from running your marketing campaigns to the fullest, just remember, such regulations benefit you as a business as well because it will keep you from becoming annoying and losing customers. Number Scrubbing is the act of getting rid of phone numbers on your contact list that have become irrelevant to you. It could be because the numbers are outdated (don’t exist anymore), duplicated during your data capturing process, or belong to customers who have opted out of your mobile marketing. See where I am going with this? That is why you can regard number washing/ HLR lookup as part of your commitment to stay within in the bounds of Mobile Compliance. As you can deduce, it is very easy to make mistakes when compiling your customer contact list. Doing it old school (manually) is not always the best idea. For example: Sending the same marketing material twice or to customers who don’t want to be contacted via text, will only serve to make you...

HLR stands for Home Location Register, which is a central database that contains details of each mobile phone subscriber that is registered with a particular mobile network. When you do an HLR lookup, you can find out important info about a particular mobile number. The HLR or “Home Location Register” is at the core of every GSM mobile network worldwide. The HLR is a central database of all customers authorised to use the network. Every SIM card that is released has a unique number attached to it called an IMSI. This number is basically a primary key associated with the HLR record. You can use a lookup to see if a number is: Valid Currently active in a network. The original network a mobile number was assigned to Ported from another network and which network it was moved to Currently roaming If the mobile has been turned on recently and what country the mobile was last used Why would a business want to do an HLR lookup? It holds the most accurate, up-to-date information on a mobile subscriber. This could help you to eliminate numbers on your database that doesn’t exist or are invalid so you don’t waste time and money sending messages to these numbers. Is an HLR lookup difficult to perform? Nope. It is fast and inexpensive. A lookup can also be performed in real time during call setup or SMS delivery. You should be able to find network carrier information quickly and cheaply and even improve routing for VoIP and SMS traffic. What about privacy? These lookups are non-invasive and you perform it remotely. The mobile...